Slashdot Mirror
The Flat Earthers Are Still With Us
narcberry writes "The BBC reports on a scientific community still holding to flat earth theories. From their article: 'Are there any genuine flat-earthers left? Surely in our era of space exploration — where satellites take photos of our blue and clearly globular planet from space, and robots send back info about soil and water from Mars — no one can seriously still believe that the Earth is flat? Wrong. Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the 'conspiracy' that the Earth is round.'"
The more correct thing to call them would be a co-host on The View.
My Uncle belonged to this society when he was in college in the 1970's. He likened it to the SCA. I love these guys because they will never, ever admit to the joke.
I think I can live with the flat earthers a good bit more than I can with the creationists. They're really out with an agenda. It's no secret that there have always been people with less than optimally functioning critical faculties...
MP3 Search Engine
There is no historical evidence that anyone ever believed the world to be flat. The idea is a relatively modern invention.
you will find plenty of people that fall WELL outside the normal range. In my industry where I deal with millions of customers its always the case. Even if the earth were covered with only 1% of out of normal range people (which I think its much higher then that) that would mean 60 million or the roughly the size of the UK. If its closer to 5% then its the size of the US. Scary there might be that many people who think like that in the world.
Yes, I'm still sore that my donut shaped earth theory never caught on. Mmmm, donut.
When you start adjusting the curriculum, be sure to include the views of this important group: http://www.manwillneverfly.com/index.htm
I can't decide which is worse, the Flat-earthers, or the hollow-earthers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth . I heard some guy on C2C the other week spouting out some nonsense about looking for a hole in the arctic that would prove the earth was hollow, I can't believe people still believe this crap.
Neal Adams (famous comic book artist, especially for Batman) is a big proponent.... check out his crackpot site: http://www.nealadams.com/morescience.html Actually, he's a proponent of the "expanding earth" theory which is even more crackpot.
The vital difference is that probably 99% of avowed Flat Earthers don't actually believe it. They are just playing a role and defending an absurd position as an intellectual exercise, like a debating club where you have to advocate a point of view regardless of your personal beliefs.
I think someone is pulling a great prank. Just read this section in their FAQ:
Q: "What's underneath the Earth?" aka "What's on the bottom?" aka "What's on the other side?"
A: This is unknown. Some believe it to be just rocks, others believe the Earth rests on the back of four elephants and a turtle.
That's straight of of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
From their welcome page: "We welcome both skeptics and believers, so please join us.".
It's just a granfalloon, and they explicitly say so with that statement. I think there may be a scientific pursuit going on there - but in the study of human thought and interaction. They're examining coping mechanisms - the ways people twist their minds around to make the world fit what they believe.
Besides, haven't we all have to do an assignment in chemistry class where we explained an experimental result purely in terms of phlogiston theory? I'm tempted to go join them for a while, just for the fun of it.
The flat earth society is meeting here today,
Singing happy little lies
And the bright ship humana is sent far away
With grave determination....
And no destination, lie, lie, lie
Agreed, that is a parody site.
Prior to the group's leader dying (in the last 10 years or so), there was a more serious website maintained, with documentation on their theories/beliefs, etc.
This guy had the global believers (yeah, global) pretty well organized - he'd collect membership fees, mail out newsletters, set up conferences, the usual for someone runnign a group. After his death, as expected, no one picked up his work, and things started to fall apart.
Don't let the parody site fool you. The Flat Earth people are as entrenched in their belief as normal people are about the world being a globe.
Huh?
Which is why Nathan Poe formulated Poe's Law
You can disprove flat-earth theory.
You can't disprove creationism.
That doesn't make creationism true, but it makes believing in it defensible (and if you don't think so, you're too wrapped up in your own worldview to realize most people don't need their day to day beliefs to be rationalized and provable).
We've seen the resulting universe from what may have been a big bang, or a sudden creation, or a complete non-event, but we have no proof of any of them.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Maybe.. maybe not..
I had a history teacher in High School who purported to be a Flat-Earther. This chap was a very good humanities/history teacher. He had all sorts of ways to bring alive one of the more boring subjects (at least for teenagers who won't figure out for another decade or two why it's one of the most important subjects). This was also my wrestling coach. So for many reasons we respected this man. And he did have a good sense of humor.
But we had no idea why he claimed to believe the Earth was flat. To this day, I'm still not certain if this was real, tongue-in-cheek or yet another creative teaching methodology. He did put most of the students on the spot to defend why we believed the Earth was round. Almost none of us had any other answer than things like "but... but... people have gone up and taken pictures". None of us could explain how for several millenia all educated folk have known the Earth was round based a few obvious things such as the way a ship disappears over the horizon, the fact that the shadow of the Earth on the moon is always round and things like certain constellations going out of sight as folk travel north or south. This was well before the Google age where someone in the classroom could have found all that in a couple of minutes on the web.
In any case, you need not fear alternative ideas (even blatantly false goofy ones) in your school systems. If anything you should fear people trying to coopt the boards to ensure goofy ideas are taught in a non-critical fashion. But then, if you have any idea of the history of schools and school boards in America, you're probably jaded anyhow.
I gotta be honest. I just looked at a lot of expanding earth pages and it really seems no more crackpot than plate tectonics and it also helps explain a few things such as why pangea seems pretty far fetched. I mean a whole sphere of water with one single landmass? It seems the surface would have had to have been more homogeneous than that. Also why are the sea floors so brand spankin new? I do know that at one point a great deal of North America's land mass was inundated with sea water, but that isn't really an explanation as to why the oceans that are present now are basically new. Plate tectonics was considered very crackpot when it came out as a theory. Also take note that these are all still in the theory stage. Plate tectonics has yet to be fully proven.
zosxavius photography
For rational people, "flat" or "round" Earth isn't a matter of belief or even truth. It's a matter of what geometric model works best to describe travel on or near Earth, best accounts for the movements of celestial objects, and so on.
For example, some flat-Earthers in TFA propose a geometric model of Earth as a disc with one "pole" at the center and the other at the circumfrence. Lines of latitude are circles, larger in the south than in the north. However, extra complexity must be added to this model to account for wildly varying rates of travel by the same vehicles around these lines; a simpler and more effective model uses a round Earth with better predictive value. This is not to say that the round Earth model is more "true" or worthy of "belief" -- just that it gives better results. Science doesn't care what is true, and reality doesn't care what you believe. Only results matter.
They provide fodder so that the self-righteous Slashdotter know-it-all can feel superior.
I've met guys like this before, and a good portion of them are just being contrary because they know it bugs people.
Another good portion of them are suffering from some kind of obvious emotional/mental disorder which makes them difficult to be around. So yes, let's all laugh at the distressed people and jump up and down for the trolls.
The only real problem with these sorts of people is that they discredit any ideas which happen to have substance but which tend to get lumped in with and sullied by flat earth thinking.
-FL
Dude, did you happen to notice that manwillneverfly.com is tongue-in-cheek? The leader of this organization describes himself as "Chairman of the Bored".